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November - Eating Homegrown Turkey

What an expensive month!  We paid for the delivery of our sweet new bundle, we upgraded to a minivan, a couple weeks later our washing machine kicked the bucket (which is being used frequently with a new baby!), then our furnace died.  We traded out the Mazda CX-9 for a 2016 Toyota Sienna.  We miss the amazing handling of the Mazda, but traded it out for easier access to the kids, back seat, and more storage space.  We strongly debated the 7-passenger with all wheel drive for our frequent road trips through the mountains vs. the 8-passenger for our growing family.  So much for our pledge to never own a minivan.  Sigh.  Good thing Liam is so cute, we happily cuddle him all day.

All the grandparents came to meet baby Liam this month.  We had a quick visit from Kyle's Dad when he came for Paul's mother's funeral, and Grandma Sweeny came straight from her cruise to stay with us the second week of November.  Marmie and Grandpa Swingle came up again for Jason Andrew's wedding, then a third time for Thanksgiving.  We keep telling them they should just move up here already ;).  Grandpa Sweeny came for a week before Thanksgiving, so we had all the grandparents here for Liam's baby blessing the Sunday before Thanksgiving.





Here's the link to Liam's sweet blessing recorded by Grandpa Sweeny (blessing starts at 0:27).


I took 6 weeks off work and they were absolute bliss.  It was so nice to be home with all of the kids and to savor every cuddle with baby Liam.  I appreciated such little things like being able to drop Tyler off at preschool and be here when Alexa got home from school, help her with homework, etc.  I think I realized more with Liam how fast it goes and have less interest in setting him down to get things done.  I just want to snuggle him all day!  Steve, Thrive's CEO, threatened people if they tried to call me and was wonderful to take on so much while I was out.

I introduced Tyler to Battleship while I was on maternity leave and we've played several times while Alexa is at school and Tad is napping.

Alexa is the best big sister to her little brothers, constantly wanting to hold Liam and help take care of Tad.  She is a great helper.  She has had a couple of mishaps with the microwave this week, but gets an A for effort.  One was trying to make Kyle some chicken strips in the microwave because he was at Bishopric meetings and we polished off dinner, but she put a single strip in for 3 minutes and it was black and billowing smoke when she opened it in a panic.  She has also burned a few bottles for Tad when he was crying and she wanted to help calm him down.  Both of these examples were when she was trying to help without being asked ;).  She will take a bath with Tad so he's not alone and help scrub him and wash his hair, and she always wants to hold Liam when it's bath time or while I'm taking a shower.

Also, she pulled out her 4th tooth and wrote a really cute thank you note to the tooth fairy.  She refused to ask for help and sat in front of the bathroom mirror for a good 30 minutes wincing and pulling on her tooth until it came out.



We spent Thanksgiving at Sara's house eating their homegrown turkey!

Also, we Face Timed with Brendan and Whitney and it was adorable to watch Chase, Jeffrey, and Tyler talk about Pokemon forever via video.  They were all so excited.

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